The rising cost of living: Why is it so? Well because not for profit essential services have been privatised and now operate on the profit principle, none more despicable than aged care where the operators bleed their patrons until they die!

The never ending practise of overleveraging overvalued assets is part of the reason and forces unproductive enterprises to seek relief in the aforementioned manner, thus adding to the upward price wage spiral and the rising price of everything!

Every western style economy rests on just two support pillars, energy and capital! And we made our worst mistake allowing profit motivated, private, price gouging entities absolute control of either!

There is an absolute plethora of free market business opportunities out there that would be seriously enhanced by returning control of both energy provision and all capital to not for profit public ownership!

Everything we buy or consume now factors in the obscene profit paradigms of those two!

Middlemen profit takers, which includes most duplicating state governments virtually double the cost of living, and for what, some paper shuffling?

Fair and reasonable profits have been replaced by maximised profits and a reinventing of capitalism so the emphasis now amplifies the capital gains prospects over solid reliable dividend streams.

Finally there is just too much debt!

We are swimming/drowning in it! Why even business inventories are now held hostage to debt servicing requirements which simply has to force prices upward!

When I was a boy, business was very different, with poorly managed enterprises not able to produce/carry sufficient operating capital to restock as and when required, allowed to fail!

Competition, it seems, has been replaced by covert collusion and price gouging? Our economy is always harmed by asset stripping, tax avoiding, profit repatriating, price gouging, debt laden, foreign speculators, who more than anyone, force upward the cost of living all while effectively destroying former discretionary spending, and another prime reason, for a forced upward, cost of living paradigm!
Alan B.

The rising cost of living, why is it so? Well because there's too much economic led in the economic saddlebag. We are just one nation not seven! With eight governments working at different state or federal based imperatives! The mere existence of ever duplicating state governments and their veritable armies of paper shuffling make work bureaucrats add 70 billions per to the cost of government, which always factors into the cost of living! As has privatised public amenity/service provision! With most business/ food production/manufacturing/value adding processing, impacted negatively by rising energy prices almost more than anything else!

And not helped by insane tax practises designed for tax practise lawyers and accountants, all who have to be paid for as a averaged 7% ripped from the average bottom line! And that seven percent cascades ever upward doubling every time it does, all while impacting negatively on the ever rising cost of just getting by!

Something the blinded by science, Author seems to want to gloss over with his profit imperative essay!?

We need real tax root branch and twig reform not endless tweaking masquerading as reform! We need to de-privatise both energy and capital provision either as publicly owned and operated, or by preferencing the cooperative capitalism model. Needed to replace monstrous edifices grown too big to fail/price gouging, tax avoiding profit repatriation of, foreign entities!

Too big to fail, usually also means massively top heavy and over managed by overpaid oligarchs merely masquerading, all too often, as competent business managers?

Affordable housing also impacts on cost of living pressure as rising debt servicing destroys, domestic economy essential, former discretionary spending! And only possible through (state government initiated/controlled?) rationed urban land release!
Alan B.

Too many words. It's up to people to work out their own finances and to realise that they cannot spend money they don't have. The world would be a better place with economists.

You know an argument is going to be weak when "great" Austrian school economists are quoted to support it. They all failed to understand how the availability of money influences the amount of economic activity. Those who understand that understand why the relationship between quantity of money and purchasing power is more complicated than Darren claims.

Another glaring omission is the possibility of different long and short term effects. For example, building a new road may raise the cost of living in the short term (due to the cost of construction) but reduce it in the long term (due to the lower cost of transportation).

___________________________________________________________________________________

ttbn, the way our economy works, it's impossible to save unless someone else borrows. Money, apart from the small proportion in notes and coins, sums to zero.

Borrowers require lenders rathan savers per se. Lent money often comes from borrowed from other folks, also borrowed money! Banks lend created money, created by quite massively securitizing mortgages etc, then claiming them as products!

Products implying something tangible of inherent worth that can just like the Emperor's new clothes, be bought and sold!

Moreover, the more we import when measured against exports the more we tend to pay in real terms, like for say a tesla 3, which costs just 35,000 USD, costing a predicted 60,000 AUD, here? Or why things Amazon can sell in more heavily taxed America costing 30%+ more here?

This couldn't happen without the implied consent of our Federal parliament?

It is said that 30% of us don't understand politics, With another 30% who don't understand economics, with 40% understanding neither, ttbn!

Sadly it is the latter (please explain) group who decide all elections! And the reason the nation is in its current parlous state?

Can any of you imagine what would become of us if the massively debt laden chinese went under and it could? Then too many words wouldn't trouble the economically illiterate, just too few dollars in their income streams! And a pressing reason to stop resting on our laurels and remaining overly dependant on China!

We need to de-privatize public amenity/essential service and repeat what the oldies, less of them were able to do, with far less comparative money, by just ending the excuse making and prioritize an energy led financial recovery. Preferably well ahead of any Chinese financial collapse!

By building and rolling out thorium powered reactors and then tasking them with pumping quite massive quantities of desalinated water into our most arid regions!

And just not as hard as some folks are made to think! After all, we can find billions for proposed (clean) coal fired power or subsidizing foreign coal miners!
Alan B.

Alan B,,
"Can any of you imagine what would become of us if the massively debt laden chinese went under and it could?"
Your grammar is so bad that I'm not sure exactly what you mean. But if you mean what I think you mean, your fears are unfounded because China could solve the problem instantly by floating its currency.

ttbn, The world would be better without greedy CEO's, corporations and corrupt politicians.

To anyone who thinks union controlled government owned business leads to lower prices, I suggest you take a look at the cost of phone calls. Compare the cost when the PMG ran the phones, & today.

Of course a huge part is the huge waste of sow called renewable energy. Get rid of windmills & solar cells, & the cost of everything will reduce.

Then get the bureaucrats & their damn fool regulations out of the picture & watch costs drop.

I was driving through a moderately large acreage sub development near here recently. All from an acre to 7 acres or so, so a bit up market, with large homes being built. I noticed 4 under construction had quite extensive scaffolding with a safety rail around the entire house roof area, while the tin or tiles were going on. I wondered how many thousands that adds to the cost of a house.

I was then annoyed by all the road works on a 25 kilometre drive to a local town. I was even more annoyed when I realised that all this was for the instillation of Armco fencing, rather than any work on the road surface. I have driven this road for 25 years, 15 of them daily to work, & have never seen any car off the road in these areas, or evidence that a car has run off the road there.

I could not help wondering how much money was wasted on 5 kilometres of Armco. I also could not help wondering how much some bureaucrat, or group of bureaucrats got in backhander for specifying this totally unnecessary Armco fencing.

If you want to see why the cost of living is rising. look no further than the government bureaucracy.

‘The late great historian and sociologist Franz Oppenheimer pointed out that …’

‘… the great Austrian School philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe said…’

‘As the late great Austrian School economist Friedrich von Hayek added…’

‘As another late great Austrian School economist Murray Rothbard stated…’

Gosh. I’m simply awed by all these ‘great’ and ‘late’ economists pointing out and saying and adding and stating that them that has gits. Those that have should be allowed to have more and those that don’t have should be grateful to have less.

From what I gather from the article, when the don’t haves want more, they send the cost of living into an escalating spiral . What ungrateful economic illiterates!

It’s all verifiable and true. We are given pretty, obtuse graphs to prove this as undeniable fact.

One dollar for one potato in Coles ...I rest my case!

Hasbeen,
Nobody's suggesting any government owned business should be union controlled. But it's technology, not ownership, that has driven the fall in the cost of phone calls. Indeed privatisation initially resulted in a halving of the speed at which costs fell.

Safety is important, and it's no longer acceptable to wait till lives are lost before doing something about it.

And getting rid of those windmills and solar cells would not reduce electricity prices at all.

So you are telling me Aidan, that a 70% reduction in manning, [or overmanning as usual with government union controlled industry], has not caused a considerable reduction in phone costs.

Pull the other one mate.

Treece777, Your English leaves a lot to be desired, go peddle your rubbish elsewhere.

Hasbeen,
"So you are telling me Aidan, that a 70% reduction in manning, [or overmanning as usual with government union controlled industry], has not caused a considerable reduction in phone costs."

No.
I'm telling you that better technology is the main reason fewer people are needed.

I don't know if this "government union controlled industry" is something that actually existed before the reforms of the 1980s, or if it's just a figment of your imagination. I suspect the latter.

Don't get me wrong - I'm certainly not saying there've never been efficiency gains as a result of privatisation. There often have. But there have also been false economies, and some cost reductions have been at the expense of quality.

Come off it Aiden. Here's a little bit of history

Once upon a time there was a double public phone booth in front of my father's post office/hardware store in a Sydney suburb. The government owned, union controlled PMG decided to paint it.

Day one; 2 utes turn up, one with a driver & linesman, one with a driver & technician. Both drivers sit in utes all day. The linesman disconnects the line, & the technician removes the phones & wiring.

Day two; 3 utes turn up, 3 drivers, linesman, technician & carpenter. After lunch a glazier & a painter arrive, with 2 more drivers.

Day three. As above less glazier & his driver.

Day six; after weekend, as day one, 6 men, 3 utes to hang the doors, & refit phones.

My father, fascinated by all this, worked out it had cost 101 hours labour to paint a couple of back yard toilet sized phone booths.

Technology had nothing to do with all this, just bureaucratic mentality, union bloody mindedness, & our stupidity in allowing it.

The reason we have to get rid of government industry is they all end up like this. Even government funded companies, [think sub building] end up the same god awful rip off.

Hasbeen,
If your "little bit of history" is accurate then clearly it's the latter.

But your absolutely ludicrous claim that "they all end up like this" makes you look like you must have slept through the 1980s and '90s! Gross overmanning in government industry is a thing of the distant past.

The problems with the submarines were totally different. Most very large projects have large teething problems, and the submarines were no exception. The problems were fixed, but our production run was so short that the cost per submarine remained high. And the failure of governments to fund a continuous program of shipbuilding means that expertise has ben lost and there's probably more cost overruns ahead.

CORRECTION:
My above post should of course read:

Hasbeen,
If your "little bit of history" is accurate then clearly it's the FORMER...

I unreservedly apologise for any offence or confusion caused.